Tribal Dance Essay

INTRODUCTION

‘Dance’, the first thing that comes to the mind is the spirit of happiness, colours and immense joy. Almost all dances form conveys this message. There are also dances which are interpretative, telling stories and passing down valuable lessons to the audience and to the younger generations. Every community has a dance or two which are performed during festivals, deaths, harvest, feasts and other special occasions. When these dances are performed, they are accompanied with music and songs. For the tribal communities these dances give them identity and vice versa. A tribe’s practices, beliefs, culture etc can also be identified through their dances.

In this research, attempt will be made to conduct an ethnographic study on the Kuki-Chin

The cultural background of the Indian folks plays a significant role in provoking the aesthetic mind towards folk-dances and creative imagination regarding fine-arts. Mridula Rashmi Kindo (2010) in her work on Oraons agrees that the folk songs and dances play a pivotal role in their social life. Dr M Sreedevi Xaviers (2012) used the word ‘vanishing trends’ when he critically evaluates that tribal folk art and establish that, with sanskritization, modernization, socio-economic and political development these tribal arts are forgotten by the tribal themselves. Therefore, the cultural heritage must be preserved and

Tribal are rich in heritage with colourful art and culture, and also gives them unique identity. (Usha Mehta, 2011) It is also seen that the originality of their art and culture is also fading. It, therefore, is important that the art and culture, the traditions of the tribal need to be examined carefully for any changes or modifications.

“The masks that you see are dead, they will come alive again when we put them on in the evening to dance”, the dancer describes on the Chho dance of Purulia, Bengal which was discovered by Ashutosh Bhattacharya. In this ‘primitive war dance’, the classical Hindu theme found in the tribal dance, and the changes in the dance brought by the new media is worth mentioning which draw to the structure of the community’s identity. (Roma Chatterji, 2009)

Studying the Nongkrem dance of the Khasis of Meghalaya, Kapila Vatsyayan (1976) felt that the small and static movements of the women dancers could protray the matrilineal system practiced by them. On the other hand, for Tribhuwan and Tribhuwan (1999) their ethnographic study on the Kolams in Tamil Nadu observed changes with the course of